A pet peeve of mine is when people recommend books (or media, or other things) without considering how large of an investment they are to read. Books usually take 10 hours or so to read. If you’re going to go slow and really dig into it, it’s probably more like 20+ hours. To make the claim “I think you should read this book”, the expected benefit should outweigh the relatively large investment of time.
Actually, no, the bar is higher than that. There are middle-ground options other than reading the book. You can find a summary, a review, listen to an interview with the author about the book, or find blog posts on the same topic. So to recommend reading the book in full, doing so has to be better than one of those middle-ground options, or worthwhile after having completed one of the middle-ground options.
To be charitable, maybe people frequently aren’t being literal when they recommend books. Maybe they’re not actually saying “I think it would be worth your time to read this book in full, and that you should prioritize doing so some time in the next few months”. Maybe they are just saying they though the book was solid.
Another factor is that reading a book might (depending on the person) simply replace time that would otherwise be spent online doing rather unproductive things. The main question may then less be whether reading the book would be more productive than the alternative, but rather whether it is engaging enough to get the motivation to actually read it. It’s hard to compete against the addictiveness of the web.
A book should itself be able to do most of this work, it’s usually possible to assess it much faster once you are looking at the text than by reading it from cover to cover. So a recommendation is more centrally advice to take a look than advice to read from cover to cover.
Yeah, that seems plausible. I have no issues with that sort of a recommendation. I think cover-to-cover recommendations also happen not infrequently though.
I think it can be a problem if you recommend a book and expect the other person to have a social obligation to read it (and needs to make an effortful excuse or pay social capital if it’s not read). It might be hard to fully get rid of this, but I think the utility comparison that should be made is “social friction from someone not following a book recommendation” vs. “utility to the other person from you recommending a book based on knowledge of the book and the person’s preferences/interests”. I suspect that in most contexts this is both an EV-positive exchange and the person correctly decides not to read/finish the book. Maybe a good social norm would be to not get upset if someone doesn’t read your book rec, and also to not feel pressured to read a book that was recommended if you started it/ read a summary and decided it’s not for you
I don’t think social obligations play much if any role in my pet peeve here. If someone recommends a book to me without considering the large investment of time I’d have to make to read it, but doesn’t apply any social pressure, I’d still find that to be frustrating.
I guess it’s kinda like if someone recommends a certain sandwich without factoring in the cost. Maybe the sandwich is really good, but if it’s $1,000, it isn’t worth it. And if it’s moderately good but costs $25, it also isn’t worth it. More generally, whether something is worthwhile depends on both the costs and the benefits, and I think that in making recommendations one should consider them both.
Related to this there was a period of time maybe 2 years ago where online any and all ills related to self-improvement or productivity were prescribed “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. “I’m having trouble studying, any recommendations?” you’d get a two word response: Atomic Habits. “I’m trying to learn a new skill but can’t keep it together” “You should read Atomic Habits”. People weren’t forthcoming with why it was effective or what lessons they gleaned from it. But were effusive in their praise and insist that it should be read.
This also applies to television shows, everyone told me to watch Game of Thrones[1], and I know there’s an XKCD comic about the mathematics of television timesinks.
My theory - “recommendations” for media are never about you, the potential reader but are the result of availability heuristic and whatever is top-of-mind for the person doing the recommendation.
The flip side is that it causes this terrible imperative to consume content you have no personal interest in just to stay socially relevant. When cultural touchstones should, ideally, be about shared values—not having enough information to remain relevant at the proverbial watercooler
To paraphrase actual conversations: “Why?” “Well they get you really invested in these characters… and then they kill them” “And why would I want to put myself through that?” “Well… it’s just good okay!”
IMO summaries and reviews rarely capture all the content of a book; it would have to be an extraordinarily fluff-laden piece of nonfiction to be perfectly replaceable.
A pet peeve of mine is when people recommend books (or media, or other things) without considering how large of an investment they are to read. Books usually take 10 hours or so to read. If you’re going to go slow and really dig into it, it’s probably more like 20+ hours. To make the claim “I think you should read this book”, the expected benefit should outweigh the relatively large investment of time.
Actually, no, the bar is higher than that. There are middle-ground options other than reading the book. You can find a summary, a review, listen to an interview with the author about the book, or find blog posts on the same topic. So to recommend reading the book in full, doing so has to be better than one of those middle-ground options, or worthwhile after having completed one of the middle-ground options.
To be charitable, maybe people frequently aren’t being literal when they recommend books. Maybe they’re not actually saying “I think it would be worth your time to read this book in full, and that you should prioritize doing so some time in the next few months”. Maybe they are just saying they though the book was solid.
Another factor is that reading a book might (depending on the person) simply replace time that would otherwise be spent online doing rather unproductive things. The main question may then less be whether reading the book would be more productive than the alternative, but rather whether it is engaging enough to get the motivation to actually read it. It’s hard to compete against the addictiveness of the web.
A book should itself be able to do most of this work, it’s usually possible to assess it much faster once you are looking at the text than by reading it from cover to cover. So a recommendation is more centrally advice to take a look than advice to read from cover to cover.
Yeah, that seems plausible. I have no issues with that sort of a recommendation. I think cover-to-cover recommendations also happen not infrequently though.
I think it can be a problem if you recommend a book and expect the other person to have a social obligation to read it (and needs to make an effortful excuse or pay social capital if it’s not read). It might be hard to fully get rid of this, but I think the utility comparison that should be made is “social friction from someone not following a book recommendation” vs. “utility to the other person from you recommending a book based on knowledge of the book and the person’s preferences/interests”. I suspect that in most contexts this is both an EV-positive exchange and the person correctly decides not to read/finish the book. Maybe a good social norm would be to not get upset if someone doesn’t read your book rec, and also to not feel pressured to read a book that was recommended if you started it/ read a summary and decided it’s not for you
I don’t think social obligations play much if any role in my pet peeve here. If someone recommends a book to me without considering the large investment of time I’d have to make to read it, but doesn’t apply any social pressure, I’d still find that to be frustrating.
I guess it’s kinda like if someone recommends a certain sandwich without factoring in the cost. Maybe the sandwich is really good, but if it’s $1,000, it isn’t worth it. And if it’s moderately good but costs $25, it also isn’t worth it. More generally, whether something is worthwhile depends on both the costs and the benefits, and I think that in making recommendations one should consider them both.
Related to this there was a period of time maybe 2 years ago where online any and all ills related to self-improvement or productivity were prescribed “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. “I’m having trouble studying, any recommendations?” you’d get a two word response: Atomic Habits. “I’m trying to learn a new skill but can’t keep it together” “You should read Atomic Habits”. People weren’t forthcoming with why it was effective or what lessons they gleaned from it. But were effusive in their praise and insist that it should be read.
This also applies to television shows, everyone told me to watch Game of Thrones[1], and I know there’s an XKCD comic about the mathematics of television timesinks.
My theory - “recommendations” for media are never about you, the potential reader but are the result of availability heuristic and whatever is top-of-mind for the person doing the recommendation.
The flip side is that it causes this terrible imperative to consume content you have no personal interest in just to stay socially relevant. When cultural touchstones should, ideally, be about shared values—not having enough information to remain relevant at the proverbial watercooler
To paraphrase actual conversations: “Why?” “Well they get you really invested in these characters… and then they kill them” “And why would I want to put myself through that?” “Well… it’s just good okay!”
IMO summaries and reviews rarely capture all the content of a book; it would have to be an extraordinarily fluff-laden piece of nonfiction to be perfectly replaceable.
My claim isn’t that they capture all the content or that they are a perfect replacement. My (implied) claim is that they are a good 80-20 option.